I'm a student learning for game development and design. I and a classmate want to start a project where we add some content to a game using software that is delivered with the game itself. So something like a level editor. As goals for our project we want to implement some Level design and basic programming/scripting. Hopefully we can make this all come true on a peace of software that can still run on a low end machine.

Now I was really hoping if some of you guys could help us with some tips on what tool kit + game we shut use. What is a friendly learning environment for a project project like this. We don't really mind what kind of game we get to work on.

Thank you for all the help.

AticAtac
—
2012-03-12T09:26:10Z —
#2

Have a look at Cryengine 3 Free SDK, it is an very easy to use editor and very decent features: www.crydev.net Some people also like Unity3D and UnrealDevelopmentKit (www.udk.com). With all thoses editors you can start prototyping and building levels with existing sample assets. If you want your own assets then you have also to deal with tools like 3DS Max or Blender.

geon
—
2012-03-12T18:30:15Z —
#3

Blender has a built in game engine. I can't really say anything about it, since i havent used it, but blender is generally pretty good.

Stainless
—
2012-03-13T09:22:42Z —
#4

Geon, blender is marmite.

You love it, or hate it. I cannot get on with it at all, I have gone past the days when I am prepared to learn hundreds of key combinations so I can move a few polygons around.

I think if you start out with blender, without having used anything like 3ds max, then you end up loving it. The other way around usually ends with a quick uninstall.

I am not a fan of game engines, I have never found one that does everything I want, on all the platforms I want.

Plus I have been doing this a long time and have a library of code I can call on, but for a start up I would look at one of the fully formed engines like Unity.

If you are just doing it as a learning experience, maybe something like XNA would be good. It's free, has a lot of examples and tutorials etc. However the code you write will not be directly useable after school, XNA's pretty dead.

AticAtac
—
2012-03-13T14:44:08Z —
#5

"I'm a student learning for game development and design" He wants to concentrate on game development and design. Multi-platform etc. isn't his aim (if i understood it correctly). If this is the case and windows is your platform and you got a "decent" machine , then go for Cryengine 3 or UDK, they are very stable and have a proofen workflow. Also, with high (Unreal-Script, Kismet; Lua, Flowgraph) and low level (C++) scripting almost everything is possible. In thoses tools you can concentrate on game design/making and everything which is necessary to have a game complete. The Sandbox editor of Cryengine 3 is even so fantastic, you don't need to bake any light etc., everything is realtime and works very smooth.